My favorite thing to do in these games is create a wrestler and then take him through whatever storylines to eventually get a shot at the title. This game lets you do that too. I love that the character creator is so intricate with so many possibilities. Half the fun is spending hours getting your guy just right.

I did exactly this and it was uber-cool. Until I got into the storyline. The plethora of stipulation-laden handicap matches is not only ridiculous, it invalidates much of the experience IMO. Case in point: The 3-on-1 handicap match in Week 6 with the "finisher" stipulation. Here's my experience....

The creating a unique finisher part was fun. But then the match started. You do, like, 40 moves on your opponent to get the finisher momentum. Mind you…it doesn’t matter at all which moves you selected for your character. Those multiple hours you dedicated to getting just the perfect move set for this guy are wasted because the game says the only thing that matters in this match is using your finishing move that it just made you create. Stupid you for investing in the process. But wait, there’s more…

Though I've killed him without taking a scratch to this point as soon as the move meter fills, this guy who couldn’t stop jack squat for the last 10 minutes suddenly has the power to reverse everything. And as soon as he reverses your move and clubs you your special move meter resets. So you’re back to zero, grinding away again.

Eventually you get him so damaged that he can’t recover fast enough to reverse you. So you hit the button for your move. But this is the same button as for your old special move and the computer decides half the time to execute that one instead of the new one you need. And of course that takes your meter down again.

So you build up again and again and maybe you get the move on a guy. But then you have to wait for him to tag out and do it to two others. By this time you’ve been through the grinding process, like, 15 times. You’ve maybe connected with 400 moves to their 20 or 30. But because of the snafus and the constant meter-reducing you still haven’t managed to get all three of them with your finisher. You could probably pin any of them (were they not constantly interfering with the pin because it’s 3-on-1) but that doesn’t matter either. Though they’re all on rubber legs your guy falls prey to that 30th move of theirs because he’s not able to withstand 30 moves even if they take place over the course of a 400 move match.

So you get pinned short of your goal. This entire process has taken 40 minutes to an hour, depending on how far you got and how many times you had to rebuild your meter. And here’s the best part…each step in the story is mandatory. You cannot just curse the designers, take the loss, and go on. You cannot continue with the story until you succeed. And I have done this, like, 10 times now. That’s 10 hours of my life trying to do this stupid thing.

So…the designers who invited me to create my own wrestler and join in their story have told me that:

A: My decisions creating the guy—the main reasons for me being here—don’t matter. Only their stipulations do.B. My skill in beating up the opponent doesn’t matter even if it’s overwhelming. I can pound him (or them) to a paste—supposedly the goal of any wrestling match—and still lose handily to guys who haven’t touched me.C: The controls they designed will get in my way more than help me.D: The story is completely under their control, not mine. There is no alternative but to follow by the nose and suffer under all this if I wish to play in my chosen mode.

Sorry, but I just had to vent. I really like this game but I'm pretty much on the verge of giving up because of what I perceive as bad--and certainly FRUSTRATING--design decisions.

Really? I didn't have any problem, and I just rented the game. Before you pin a guy, make sure you hit both guys outside the ring so they cannot interfere with the pin. I do this every tag-team or handicap match, and it works.

Yup. Got that part. The issue in this particular match isn't the pinning or winning though. I'd happily lose the match and walk just to be done with it. In or out of the ring, the issue is hitting your finisher on all three guys before winning or losing. That's the rub.

To be fair, the frustration is not just stemming from the fact I'm having such trouble doing it, it's the way the whole thing works. I am literally clubbing these guys to death. They can barely get in a shot and I'm dealing with all of their normal reversals. The thing is, the game appears to change when my finisher meter gets full. Their reversals have full effect then for reasons I can't discern.

I don't think I put this clearly in the other post, but it bothers me that I am hitting 30 moves to their 1 but as a result of that 1 move they hit we are either back to completely equal ground or they are actually ahead. My only way to "win" is to fill that meter and hit those finishers. They are under no such obligation. All they have to do is hit enough moves over the course of 45 minutes that I stay down...about 15-20 from what I can tell. So we battle for 5 minutes, I hit my 30, they hit 1...a reversal of my finish. (Or I hit 31 and the 31st is the WRONG DAMN FINISHER.) My meter then resets completely and I'm back to square one. They have tallied one of their 15-20 hits. That means despite me out-hitting them by a huge amount, THEY are actually ahead in the game by virtue of the way the match is set up and the computer works.